previous next

[636] “ἄμεινον <ἂν> εἶχε, φησὶν ὁ Ἀρίσταρχος, εἰ ἐγέγραπτο “βοῶν εὐποιητάων” ἔξω τοῦ τέ συνδέσμου”, Did. i.e. the noise of bronze and of the leather of shields. Ar.'s reading — for which it is clear that he could find no authority — avoids the obvious difficulty of a distinction between leather and shields, for it is hard to see what other leather than that of the shields is in question; and indeed “ῥινός” means a shield in 4.447, 8.61 (see also 12.263). Schol. T can hardly be right in thinking that “ῥινοῦ” means the rough unworked “λαισήϊα” as opposed to the carefully-worked “ἀσπίδες” (“βόες εὐποίηται”). Ar. suggested as an alternative “ἐξ ἐπαναλήψεως νοητέον λέγεσθαι τὸ αὐτὸ ὡς “πυκνοὶ καὶ θαμέες”” (Od. 12.92) “καὶ “πόλεμόν τε μάχην τε”” (16.251) (An.). This would be more satisfactory if there were not a third term co-ordinated with the two be “τε”. Clearly χαλκοῦ includes weapons of offence, and must not be restricted to the metal facing of the shields. After all the difficulty is insignificant, for the slight redundancy of expression in the text is easily pardonable. For βοῦς in the sense of shield see 7.238.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide References (6 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (6):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: